Just Another Face
by kbeto
Summary: Tom's helplessly in love, Danny's the popular guy, Dougie's a lawyer and Harry isn't Santa (but is coming to town). Beautiful things are made to be appreciated from afar, or so Tom thought. For some people, we're just another face lost among a crowd. Flones, fluff, school AU. Rated T because it's better be safe than sorry.


_Disclaimer: My New Year's resolution will be to work on something to own them. Till then, no, I don't own anything._

_A/N: Another prompt from imagineyourOTP, that I extended a bit to attend **Galaxy-Defending-Hopeful**'s craving for a school AU (this is for you, jellybeans). By far, it's the longest piece I wrote for a prompt that doesn't belong to any of my tables. I hope this ends the year with a nice touch to my works! XX_

_**Anonymous** BWAhaha! I was actually afraid of turning Dan into a crazy stalker, but there was so much I could do with that prompt. I can attest that he's not as pervy as it may sounded by the end. Maybe I'll need a sequel or something to explain what exactly happened on 'Wet Memories'! ;)_

_I'm not sure shy!Dougie would do the same to Harry, but he totally would watch Harry do yoga and all those positions with his arse in the air (of course, he would try to disguise it reading a magazine or something)! Thank you so much, dear! I hope this new year will be a blast for us all! :D_

Just Another Face

"Wake up, Thomas. You don't want to be late, do you?" Nobert announced in his robotic voice, shortly before 'Circle of Life' started playing and scared a young boy awake. Tom reckoned that he could choose a less frightening tone to wake him up, but that one seemed to work best when he didn't want to leave his bed.

"Maybe I should adjust the volume a bit," he groaned, running a hand through his blond, messy hair and giving Nobert –his alarm system– a nasty look. With not much of options left, Tom jumped from bed, turned the alarm off and scrambled off to the bathroom; every Monday was ever the same.

~#~

"You're unusually early for a Monday, Tommy," Dougie approached his mate, leaning against the many lockers aligned on the corridor. "All that just to catch a glimpse of Danny? Boy, you sure fall hard."

"Just a bit louder, and everyone in school will know, Dougie," Tom hushed the smaller blond, making the boy have a fit of laughter. Both had been friends for as long as they can remember (even if not being in the same year) and knew each other's secrets, thus whom each of them fancied.

"You should do something about it, though," Dougie furrowed his brow, genuine concern plastered on his face. "You won't get anything, if you don't ask for it first."

"Because it's _that_ easy," Tom rolled his eyes and slammed his locker door shut.

Deep inside, he knew Dougie's reasoning didn't sound _that_ alien, but how could he just walk up to the most popular boy in the school and ask him out? As if on cue, the doors swung open and a coupled strolled in, followed by quite a crowd. A freckled boy with a captivating smile, blue eyes, curly hair and freckled-dusted skin greeted people calling his name, waving, winking and shaking hands – one would think he enjoyed the status of a celebrity there.

"Footy's still on, Matt!" he gave a random boy –at least from Tom's perspective– a thumb up sign, all the while sporting an unfaltering smile. He had an arm slung around a short girl with platinum blond hair, who seemed too much into her phone and had an obvious air of tediousness around her.

Tom's heart immediately adopted a faster beat, pumping blood quicker through his all body –though it felt like all the flow got redirected to his ears and face. The popular boy with a girlfriend in tow was no other than Daniel 'Danny' Jones, also known as the boy he fancied the trousers off of.

"Girl's faker than a £1,99 bank note. My sister got paired with her in Biology and it was awful– I never saw Sis that angry in my whole life."

"Not now, Dougs," Tom hissed and turned back to his locker, opening it again and pretending to search for something. He wasn't friends with Danny and knew for a fact that he would never catch the blue-eyed boy's attention, and yet he tried his hardest to remain invisible, afraid he would make a fool out of himself.

After a few minutes a light tap on metal pulled Tom back from his thoughts. "He's gone, you can 'unbury' your head, Ostomrich."

"I wasn't hiding, if that's what you're thinking," Tom retorted, mildly offended by such statement. "And ostriches do _not_ bury their heads to avoid danger, that's just some silly legend with no scientific foundation."

"Trust you to know that kind of stuff," Dougie shrugged. "See you later, Tommo," he waved goodbye and took the opposite direction that Tom would follow.

~#~

Concentrating on class turned into a big problem for Tom, mainly because he had almost every single one of his classes with Danny. Of course, it wouldn't be fair to blame the brunet of anything –he wasn't even aware of Tom's existence, how could he even do something to screw the boy's studies?– and yet Tom found himself often thinking about Danny whenever his teachers asked him about the slight drop in his grades (nothing too serious, though).

"_Focus, Tom! People tell you how intelligent you are, and here you are, struggling to keep a boy off your thoughts,"_ he sighed internally, having one of his lengthy monologues with himself. _"Not any boy, have you seen that body?"_

Tom hated that usually the bad voice in his head won their arguments with some uncalled remark. His mind promptly reeled back to the first time he saw Danny shirtless after PE: tight abs, toned arms and chest, along with nice shoulders that he have been developing over the year.

All that may give a false impression that Tom's interests were purely sexual, right? Wrong. It took Tom a longer time to admit to himself that he would like to touch Danny's body than it was to admit he had feelings for his classmate. Not a day would pass without him recalling when he started seeing Danny in a good light.

~#~

"_You twats get out 'fore I rip ya balls off!"_

_Dougie watched from his spot on the ground a tall boy drive his bullies away. He wasn't sure about what happened, but he was glad for having someone help him – the few other that witnessed the scene just walked away, pretending to see nothing. _

"_You okay, mate?" a second boy also with dark hair and blonde highlights, crouched in front of Dougie, offering him a hand. His built, Dougie noticed, was smaller and his voice incredibly soft for someone who looked pissed at the world 24/7. "Can you stand or even walk?"_

"_I'm okay, thank you." Dougie nearly whispered, the bruises on his face still stinging from the few punches earned. "Thank you and your loud friend."_

"_He's better than any guard dog, I reckon," the stranger winked, making Dougie chuckle a bit. "Go have Mrs. Payne sort you out and be careful, ok?"_

"_And if ya ever need help, just call Danny and Harry," 'Loud boy' grinned, looping an arm around Harry's neck and pointing to themselves._

~#~

That day Danny earned Tom's respect and admiration, despite of them not knowing each other well. Since then, he paid attention to Danny more and more, till he realised that a popular boy could caring and nice (not much could be said about Danny's friends), and that his initial admiration developed into a massive crush, leaving him flustered whenever he saw those generous, blue eyes.

"Thank goodness he isn't with me in English," a heavy sigh escaped Tom's lips. At least, he was safe from Danny's incredible aura every Thursday, if only for a couple of hours.

~#~

"Shit! Mr. Norris will munch my head off!"

Mr. Norris, the English teacher, was well-known for his voracious reading habits, as well as being ultra strict with his schedule. Aside from almost _murdering_ people arriving late for his class, he was also one of the best teachers in the entire school– although Tom doubted he could just get away with his tardiness by complimenting on the man's professionalism.

The corridors were empty, like anticipated, and Tom slowed his pace down to large strides, instead of running like his trousers were on fire. He had just turned left, when he saw someone appear from a room with phone in hand. That 'someone' affected Tom quite badly and he had to walk past them to get to English.

"_Just do your thing and walk past him in silence, he won't even notice you,"_ he breathed deeply and walked down the corridor, trying to keep his knees from buckling under him.

"Aren't ya a bit late?"

Tom froze. It didn't sound like Danny was still talking on the phone, and he sure as hell hadn't seen anybody else there. _"Great, now you're really being delusional, Tom," _he dismissed it and kept walking.

"Oi! Thomas!"

Tom whipped his head back, upon hearing his name. He didn't know if that was something good or not, but he could still hear it ring loud and clear in his ears.

"We don't have English together, eh? Explains why I never see you there," Danny waved, jogging over to Tom's position. "Who did ya got?"

"Mr. Norris..."

"Mate, he'll _chew_ you up," the brunet winced. "Here, let me help ya."

Before Tom could assimilate all the facts, Danny dragged him by hand –a large and warm hand, Tom noticed– to class. He then knocked on the door and awaited till an angry looking Englishman yanked it open, features softening as soon as his eyes fell upon Danny.

"Sorry for keeping him, Mr. Norris. I had an emergency and Thomas offered to help me and got late because of tha'," Danny spoke in a tone that made him sound sincere. Tom would have bought that otherwise, too.

"It's okay, Mr. Jones. Going out of his way to help someone else is a noble act, I won't punish Mr. Fletcher," the man gave both boys a line thin smile and motioned for Tom to walk in, before disappearing back in the classroom.

"You're welcome," Danny whispered in Tom's ear, fleeing back to his own class the next second. Tom stood there for a second –hand feeling the ear Danny's lips brushed against– until he heard Mr. Norris call his name.

~#~

"And he also knows your name? That's fantastic!"

For some reason, Dougie received the news better than Tom himself. He enumerated in a rather long rambling all reasons why he believed Tom should try and strike a friendship with Danny, even though he knew that wouldn't be enough to convince his friend.

"I don't see what's so fantastic! You want me to go to him and ask 'hey, you're cool! Wanna be friends' or something?"

"I don't think you're ready for his _'something'_ bit yet," Dougie smirked. Tom's face alternated between pale and rosy within seconds, just by thinking about the implications on that tone.

"You are the worst, Douglas."

"Yeah, yeah. That's something I hear on a daily basis from you."

~#~

"I'll be picking your partners for our next project," the new teacher –Ms. Lufkin– announced, being met with a group groan. Mr. Brown, their older teacher, had some personal issues to take care of and wouldn't be returning for the remainder of the school year. "It's good to work with different people," she added in a very enthusiastic manner, pushing her glasses up with her middle and index fingers.

"This isn't going to end well..." Tom sighed. To a certain extent, his fears were completely founded: Mr. Lufkin started by separating all couples –which were quite a few– and then everyone that seemed to have a minimal degree of familiarity. Soon enough, everyone got assigned to a new partner, many paired with someone they didn't even knew the _first_ name.

"I'm lucky she didn't put me with some ob... oxi... obxi"

"Obnoxious?" Tom offered, not bothering to look who got the stool beside him.

"Just-what-you-said girls tha' are friends with my chick," the voice chuckled well humoured. "I'm not good with long words."

Tom took a sharp intake of air, since he knew who the voice belonged to. He slowly turned to see Danny smiling at him, briefly combing his curls off his beautiful blue eyes. Suddenly, he got aware of how most girls in the room (even some boys) were glaring at him with murderous intent, which prompted his self-awareness to kick in and make him sweat buckets.

~#~

As if he didn't have enough on his plate, Tom had to divide his attention between paying attention to the short video about precautions needed when working with chemical solutions and safe behaviour inside a lab (not so interesting) and how Danny would absent-mindedly nibble the right corner of his mouth, making himself kissable and cute, all at once (thousands times more interesting).

"Somebody put me out of my misery..." he whined. Danny's eyes flickered to him, and for a moment he thought he might have been speaking out loud, his mind searching for some lame excuse to justify him watching the other boy.

Danny titled his head to the duo to their right, Tom's gaze falling on a boy switching the positions of the material that would be used by a third duo. It was an obvious tentative of sabotage and Tom saw a thick vein appear on his partner neck, along with teeth gritting in rage.

"Tha' wanker want to take piss out of those girls," he hissed. Tom only confirmed the indignation burning inside Danny from those words; his eyes were dead set on the boy.

"Oh, God... This _really_ isn't going to end well!"

~#~

"What should I do, Dougs?"

"That's tough, Tommo. You should keep quiet, I guess?" Dougie replied with a shrug, watching his mate pace back and forth around his room and finally plop down onto bed. "He knows you saw him do it?"

Tom nodded. "Yeah, told him. I know he wanted to avenge those girls, but that was kinda wrong," he pushed the hair off of his brown eyes. "He looked very nervous after that."

Tom's dilemma consisted of whether or not telling anyone else he saw Danny slip a cigarette or two inside Paul's bag, what resulted in the troublemaker being sent to their scary headmaster. Tom, too, thought he needed to be punished for the stupid prank, but it should be proportional to his actions –their school had no tolerance for cigarettes or alcohol within those walls and punishment was equally severe.

"We'll figure something by Monday. Don't worry," Dougie smiled in a attempt of reassuring Tom. Needles to say, it didn't seem to work much.

A new Monday came and Tom found himself back to the same old routine: jumping out of his skin to the sudden intro of 'Circle of Life' and struggling to get to school in time, which he succeed at. As per usual, he found Dougie by his locker, smiling wide at him. Everything seemed normal and ordinary, that until a pair of legs approached Tom whilst he had his head in his locker.

"Can we talk?" Danny asked in a low voice, frowning. "In private," his eyes shifted to Dougie and he greeted the smaller boy with a nod.

"We're best mates and I'm his lawyer, Danny," Dougie stepped forward, lightly pushing an astonished Tom back with free hand. "We know what you did."

"Just keep quiet about tha', 'kay? It would be really bad if anything got out." Danny's tone sounded slightly defeated, as if he expected that from the beginning. He ran a hand trough his curls and took a deep breath, before addressing the boys once more. "Anything I can do for ya?"

"Daniel, that's not–"

"We're open to negotiation, yeah," Dougie cut Tom mid-sentence, a sly grin on his face.

~#~

"You don't have to do any of this, I don't want to be friends with you for such a petty reason."

"Shut up, Thomas. I tried to bride ya and it worked," Danny chuckled. "And you're a cool lad, I don't mind being around ya."

"I think the word you're looking for is 'bribe'," Tom also chuckled, momentarily forgetting about all the incredulous looks they received each corridor they crossed together; the prospect of Danny marrying him made him ecstatic deep down inside.

With his self appointed authority, Dougie made a deal with Danny: the brunet were to spend a whole week hanging out with Tom, and in turn they would forget about the incident with Paul. Tom obviously protested against such a outlandish idea, but Danny was so quick to accept it that he didn't have any say on the matter.

"Won't your girlfriend say anything?" Having or not having feelings for Danny, Tom knew his prince was already taken, and that should be clear in his my mind all moments.

"We're... not together any more. Some stuff happened." The pang in his stomach almost made Tom reach out and pull Danny into a long lasting hug. Those blue eyes always full of life seemed so downcast for a moment– it was hard to see him miserable.

"I'm sure things will turn out fine. I'll try my best to help you keep mind off of things!"

"Thanks, mate." Danny wrapped his hand around Tom's –that mysteriously found its way to Danny's shoulder at some point– and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Maybe, we can be best mates when this week ends," he added, looping an arm around the pale neck and dragging both into the classroom. If only he knew what such closeness did to Tom's heart.

~#~

"I feel like we're married," Danny groaned. "Were you always this bossy?"

"You're going to thank me in the future," Tom stuck his tongue out and threw the packet of 'death sticks' in a nearby bin. His relationship with Danny improved lots of the course of a few days, so it was safe to say they were already friends; it felt very natural for both of them. "I care about your health, you daft boy."

"Saving my life _and_ insulting me? Cheers, mate."

"You are welcome! After today you won't have me scolding you any longer, you just have to quit–"

"Danny, we need to talk," a third voice interrupted their banter, and a few feet from them stood a blond girl with very puffy eyes, whom both boys immediately recognised.

"We have nothing to talk about, Diana." Tom noticed Danny's jaw tighten on the spot. By now he knew that almost nothing got to throw his newest friend off his good mood, but when it did, he looked like a total different person. "I appreciate if ya don't contact me again."

"I'm here to make things right! I know what I did was wrong–"

"That's funny! You knew but that didn't stop ya from doing it again, uh?"

"Dan, let it go, it's not worthy," Tom took hold of Danny, trying to drag him in the opposite direction. Although they never talked about why the couple split, he had an idea of what would make Danny want to cut ties with someone. "Let's go."

"You stay out of this, slutboy! You think I don't see how you look at him?" Diana spat viciously, pointing an accusing finger at Tom. Danny looked confused, but reacted in time to put himself between his ex-girlfriend and his mate, barring the girl from slapping Tom.

"Wha' are ya saying? Tom's my mate!"

"And you're as thick as always! Queerboy here wants your dick, he wants to ride–"

"That's enough! What if I want him, too?" Danny shook the girl with a firm grip. "Leave me and my friends alone, got me?"

The girl fell to her knees and cried hysterically. Even though Tom felt bad for her, he knew she brought that upon herself, for calling him names and whatever else she had done. Why would she even think –and maybe she wasn't being rational at all– offending him would make Danny get back with her? All those questions were pushed aside when Danny tugged on Tom's arm and dragged them back to the bus stop, where they sat in uncomfortable silence.

"_I wonder what's he's thinking,"_ Tom risked a side glance at the curly-haired boy. He seemed to be lost in deep thought, gaze focused on the ground.

Their trip back home felt like a whole month to Tom. He could say he was relieved when bidding Danny goodbye, but utterly confused when they both walked to his doorstep.

"I understand that things got weird... Still, this will forever be the best week I ever had in school," Tom smiled, extending a hand between them. "It was nice to be your friend for a week."

Danny was still silent, only that this time he stared at Tom's brown eyes instead of the ground. He looked from the blond's hand and back to the chocolate eyes, swatting the hand away from him. Tom's smile faltered for a second, but it didn't last long, as he found himself being pulled into a tight hug. It was different from any hug he ever got from Dougie or his family, Danny's hand resting on the nape of his neck, gently rubbing his skin. His arms reacted of own accord, wrapping themselves around Danny, whilst he buried his face and inhaled the nice smell the brunet always gave off.

"I hoped we could be mates for _life,"_ Danny smiled, his eyes glassy with tears. "I sorta liked you before, too. I just thought you wouldn't want anything with a thick headed guy like me," he breathed, hands cupping Tom's face and slowly drawing close for a kiss.

"_This isn't happening, this isn't happening!" _All synapses in Tom's brain got interrupted, the soft touch of Danny's lips on his shooting electricity through his limbs. It was a simple kiss, chaste at best, but that would do for the time being. When they broke apart, Tom had tears in his eyes as well, whereas Danny beamed with his usual, beautiful smile.

"Harry's visiting me this weekend, it's been a while since his family left," his casual tone back to his speech. "Tell Douglas and we can all hang together! They did seem to get along well, I reckon."

"But– I mean–"

"You had me for a _whole_ week, Tom. I'm sure our first date can wait," Danny winked. "I'll let ya pinch me bum, if you behave well," the last part came out as hot breath tickling against Tom's ear, reddening his cheeks and ears. He probably would forever be in Dougie's debt, but that didn't matter. He found out that, to Danny, he was never just another face in the crowd, and nothing could make him happier.

~Fin~

_A/N: Prompt - "Imagine person A of your OTP having many classes with person B, but they're not friends and don't actively talk. Person A sees person B everywhere, though, but doesn't think person B has ever noticed them. One day, person A is going to a class they don't share and walks past person B, who turns around and calls out to them, waving. It turns out that person B notices person A just as much as the opposite_."


End file.
